ENTER BIO-COMPLEXITY

A new on-line, open-access, peer-reviewed
journal with the ungainly
name BIO-Complexity (ISSN 2151-
7444) was announced on April 30,
2010, by its publisher, the Biologic
Institute. According to its statement
of purpose and scope, BIO-Complexity
“aims to be the leading
forum for testing the scientific
merit of the claim that intelligent
design (ID) is a credible explanation
for life.” The journal hopes to
publish “studies in all areas of science
with clear relevance to its aim,
including work focusing on the relative
merit of any of the principal
alternatives to ID (neo-Darwinism,
self-organization, evolutionary
developmental biology, etc.).”

Hailing the journal was the
Discovery Institute’s Jay Wesley
Richards, on the Discovery
Institute’s blog on May 1, 2010. He
declared, “A new scientific journal,
BIO-Complexity, is set to accelerate
the pace and heighten the tone of
the debate over intelligent design,”
complained that work supporting
“intelligent design” is unjustly (if
not entirely) excluded from the scientific
literature, and added, “Of
course, the journal itself is simply a
forum for the evidence to be presented,
defended, debated, and critiqued
— not to be a mouthpiece
for ID” (Richards 2010). A look at
the publisher, the editorial staff, and
the history of “intelligent design”
journals suggests otherwise.

THE BIOLOGIC INSTITUTE

The Biologic Institute — as
Barbara Forrest noted in her
“Understanding the intelligent
design creationist movement” —
was first publicly mentioned in a
story in The New York Times
(Chang 2005) in August 2005, “one
month before the Kitzmiller trial
began, at the time of the ID movement’s
greatest need to create the
appearance of scientific authenticity”
(Forrest 2007: 23). Yet it was
not incorporated in the state of
Washington until October 2005,
and its existence was not publicly
confirmed until 2006, when
Celeste Biever, a reporter for New
Scientist, visited it in person and
received a chilly reception. “The
reticence,” she reported, “cloaks an
unorthodox agenda” (Biever
2006).

George Weber, a director of the
Biologic Institute, a retired member
of the business faculty at
Whitworth University, and the
head of the Spokane chapter of
the old-earth creationist ministry
Reasons to Believe, told Biever,
“We are the first ones doing what
we might call lab science in intelligent
design. ... The objective is to
challenge the scientific community
on naturalism.” After he spoke
to New Scientist, however, Weber
left the board of the Biologic
Institute, and Douglas Axe, the
lab’s senior researcher, told New
Scientist that Weber “was found to
have seriously misunderstood the
purpose of Biologic and to have
misrepresented it.”

Instead, Axe said, the lab only
seeks “to show that the design perspective
can lead to better science.
He also contended that it will nevertheless
“contribute substantially
to the scientific case for intelligent
design.” Axe told New Scientist
that the Biologic Institute was currently
conducting research on “the
origin of metabolic pathways in
bacteria, the evolution of gene
order in bacteria, and the evolution
of protein folds”as well as research
on computational biology, where,
he claimed, “we are nearing completion
of a system for exploring
the evolution of artificial genes
that are considerably more life-like
than has been the case previously.”

A list of selected publications
on the Biologic Institute’s website
cites twenty-eight papers in a variety
of fields. But over half were
published before the institute was
officially formed, and Biologic
Institute is listed as the affiliations
of the authors on only two (Axe
and others 2008, Sternberg 2008);
neither mentions “intelligent
design”. The editor of the journal
in which the former article
appeared commented:

There has been some concern
about the authors’ connection
with an intelligent
design institute, which
understandably creates a perception
that the research
may be ideologically biased. I
did not detect any such bias
in this manuscript; nor do
the results support intelligent
design in any way.
(Scheffler 2008)

New Scientist reported, “It was
Discovery that provided the funding
to get the Biologic Institute up
and running,” but noted that both
Axe and a spokesperson for the
Discovery Institute insisted that
the Biologic Institute is a “separate
entity” from the Discovery
Institute (Biever 2006). Biologic
Institute’s tax return for 2006 indicated
revenues of $261 000 from
“indirect public support” — a category
that would include revenue
from a tax-exempt parent organization,
such as the Discovery
Institute. In 2007 and 2008, the
Biologic Institute’s revenues, of
$464 000 and $280 998, respectively,
were from direct public support.
The source is unclear.

There is also overlap between
the personnel of Biologic Institute
and of the Discovery Institute’s
Center for Science and Culture:
Guillermo Gonzalez and Jonathan
Wells are both listed under
“People” at the former and as
“Senior Fellows” at the latter.
Brendan Dixon, listed under
“People” at the Biologic Institute
and a coauthor of Axe and others
(2008), donated $700 000 to the
Discovery Institute’s Center for
Science and Culture in 2006
through a private family foundation
(Bottaro 2007). The same foundation
also donated $30 000 to
Baylor University to fund a parttime
appointment for William
Dembski; it was later returned by
the university (Bottaro 2007).

Axe himself was named in the
Wedge document as the head of
the Discovery Institute’s Center for
Science and Culture biochemistry
program, and he was listed as a
Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s
Center for the Renewal of Science
and Culture (as it was known then)
in 2000; although his name was
removed in the same year, his curriculum
vitae in 2003 listed him
as a Senior Fellow from 1999 to
the present (Forrest and Gross
2004: 40–1). Axe told Forrest in
2001 that he had not attempted to
argue for “intelligent design” in any
of his publications (Forrest and
Gross 2004: 42), although in 2007
he was quoted as saying that they
“add to the case for intelligent
design” (Forrest 2007: 24).

THE EDITORIAL STAFF

BIO-Complexity’s editor-in-chief
and the thirty people on its editorial
board have a variety of connections
with the “intelligent design”
movement. Five — Michael Behe,
Walter Bradley, William Dembski,
Scott Minnich, and Jonathan Wells
— are Fellows at the Discovery
Institute’s Center for Science and
Culture. Those five, as well as
Russell Carlson, James Keener,
Matti Leisola, and Jed Macosko,
were Fellows of the International
Society for Complexity,
Information, and Design, which
William Dembski cofounded in
2001, with the slogan “retraining
the scientific imagination to see
purpose in nature”. ISCID seems to
have become moribund.

The editor-in-chief and twentyfour
members of the editorial
board of BIO-Complexity are signatories
to the Discovery
Institute’s “A Scientific Dissent
from Darwinism”:

We are skeptical of the
claims for the ability of random
mutation and natural
selection to account for the
complexity of life. Careful
examination of the evidence
for Darwinian theory should
be encouraged. (www.dissentfromdarwin.com)

The statement, of course, is widely
and misleadingly cited by creationists
as evidence for the claim that
there is a genuine scientific controversy
over evolution.

Three members of the editorial
board — Behe, Dembski, and
Minnich — were slated to testify in
Kitzmiller v Dover, although only
Behe and Minnich did so (Elsberry
2006). Five members of the editorial
board — Behe, Carlson,
Edward Peltzer, Ralph Seelke, and
Wells — testified in Kansas in May
2005 to express their support for
the so-called minority report version
of the state’s science education
standards, rewritten with the
aid of a local “intelligent design”
organization to misrepresent evolution
as scientifically controversial.
(The standards were adopted
in November 2005, only to be
rescinded in February 2007, after
the balance of power on the state
board of education shifted.)

There are also connections with
creationism in its traditional forms,
starting with the editor-in-chief,
Matti Leisola. He is identified by
BIO-Complexity as “a professor of
Bioprocess Engineering at Aalto
University (previously Helsinki
University of Technology).”
Unmentioned, however, is the fact
that he is evidently a dyed-in-thewool
creationist, having spoken on
his “30 years as a non-evolutionist”
at the 8th European Creationist
Conference (Anonymous 2003),
being described by Creation
Ministries International as a biblical
creationist (Wieland 2009), and
having told a Finnish Christian
youth magazine that evolution “is
basically a heresy” (Anonymous
2006).

Similarly, Colin Reeves is a
Trustee of Biblical Creation
Ministries and a contributor to the
journal of the Biblical Creation
Society (Lynch 2009, Pieret 2009);
Stuart Burgess is listed as a speaker
for the United Kingdom branch of
Answers in Genesis and a contributor
to AiG’s journal (Lynch 2009,
Pieret 2009);Norman Nevin edited
and contributed to a book arguing
that Christians ought not to accept
evolution (Nevin 2009); David
Snoke wrote a book arguing for
old-earth creationism (Snoke
2006); and so on. To be sure, none
of these activities and affiliations
implies that the editorial board
members are not competent to
evaluate submissions to the journal.
But it is hard to imagine such a
prevalence of creationists in a journal
without any axe to grind.

True, it seems that there were
efforts to recruit non-creationists to
the editorial board. Loren Haarsma
and Scott Turner are both on the
board: Haarsma is a physicist at
Calvin College who coauthored a
book arguing for a reconciliation of
evolution and religion — in particular,
Christian Reformed doctrine
— (Haarsma and Haarsma 2007;see
Flietstra 2008), while Turner is a
biologist at the State University of
New York’s College of Environmental
Science and Forestry who wrote
a book declaring on its first page
that it “is not about intelligent
design ... ID theory is essentially
warmed-over natural theology” and
adding, “it is not a critique of
Darwinism” (Turner 2007).

Günter Wagner, a biologist at
Yale University, was also asked to
join the editorial board. He told
RNCSE that he declined because
“the existing evolutionary biology
journals are able to handle the necessary
research on the evolvability
of complex characters.” He
explained:

Publishing on this subject in
mainstream journals is also
better for ... the credibility of
the eventual answer to this
question, as well as for the
integrity of the scientific
process in general. There are
too many reasons for scientists
to distrust a journal with
a substantial ID influence,
regardless of whether this
particular enterprise is
biased or not. ... In the current
situation any project of
this sort will have a hard
time to earn the trust of the
scientific community.

THE HISTORY OF “INTELLIGENT
DESIGN” JOURNALS

The first, and most successful,
“intelligent design” journal was
Origins & Design (ISSN 0748-
9919), produced by the Access
Research Network, formerly
Students for Origins Research,
which published Origins
Research. The stated goal of
Origins & Design was “(1) to
examine theories of origins, their
philosophical foundations, and
their bearing on culture, and (2) to
examine all aspects of the idea of
design.” The journal received a
portion of its funding from the
Discovery Institute’s Center for the
Renewal of Science and Culture
(Forrest and Gross 2004: 166, 176).
Origins & Design apparently
ceased publication in 1999, with
its last issue identified as volume
19, number 2.

After his plan to establish a base
for “intelligent design” at Baylor
University failed, Dembski founded
the International Society for
Complexity, Information, and
Design (Forrest and Gross 2004:
207–13). ISCID published the second
“intelligent design” journal,
Progress in Complexity,
Information, and Design (ISSN
1555-5089) in an on-line format. Its
stated goal was “to advance the science
of complexity by assessing
the degree to which teleology is
relevant (or irrelevant) to the origin,
development, and operation of
complex systems.” Progress in
Complexity, Information, and
Design ceased publication in
2005, with its last issue identified
as volume 4, number 1.

The on-line Journal of
Evolutionary Informatics (no
ISSN) was sponsored by the
Evolutionary Informatics Lab, a project
of Dembski and Robert Marks, a
professor of electrical and computer
engineering at Baylor University.
The “Lab”was controversial because
it was originally hosted on a Baylor
University server; after Marks and
Baylor were unable to come to
terms about its content, it was
removed to a third-party hosting
facility. As a result, Marks was then
featured as a “victim” in the creationist
propaganda movie Expelled
(Sager 2008). The Journal of
Evolutionary Informatics seems to
have become defunct before managing
to publish a single issue.

These journals failed to make a
splash scientifically: articles from
none of them appear in major scientific
indexes such as PubMed,
Web of Knowledge (which subsumes
Science Citation Index and
Biological Abstracts), and EBSCO’s
Academic Search Complete,
although a few articles from
Origins & Design are indexed in
GeoRef. Google Scholar indexes
articles from all of the “intelligent
design” journals except the
Journal of Evolutionary
Informatics — but it also indexes
articles from such young-earth creationist
journals as Creation
Research Science Quarterly, Acts
and Facts, and the Journal of
Creation, betraying a certain lack
of discrimination.

Moreover, few articles from
“intelligent design” journals are
even cited in the scientific literature.
According to Web of Science,
only two such articles, both from
Origins & Design, have ever been
cited in the literature — and not
auspiciously. One, Craig (1996),
was cited by two ringleaders of the
“intelligent design” movement,
writing in the theology journal
Zygon (Dembski and Meyer 1998).
The other (Kenyon and Mills 1996;
coauthored by Dean Kenyon who
also coauthored Of Pandas and
People) was cited in a notorious
paper (Meyer 2004) published in a
legitimate scientific journal under
suspicious circumstances and subsequently
disavowed by the journal
(Sager and Scott 2008).

It is not surprising, then, that
academic libraries were not
inclined to subscribe to Origins &
Design. Only thirty-two libraries
listed in WorldCat show holdings
of Origins & Design; the majority
are libraries of seminaries or of colleges
or universities with religious
affiliations historically disposed
toward creationism in various
forms. WorldCat lists fifty-two
libraries with holdings of Progress
in Complexity, Information, and
Design — but those libraries need
not subscribe to or provide space
for a free on-line journal. No
libraries apparently have holdings
of the Journal of Evolutionary
Informatics (which is not even
listed on WorldCat), or of BIOComplexity
(which is listed).

“Intelligent design” journals
thus seem to be a scientific cul-desac
— a fact ironically conceded
by the Discovery Institute, which
in a “briefing packet for educators”
(Discovery Institute 2007) recommends articles from Origins &
Design and Progress in
Complexity, Information, and
Design, but under the rubric
“Science Resources About
Evolution and Intelligent Design”
rather than “Peer Reviewed
Sciences [sic] Articles”. Scientists
with anything scientifically important
to say about “intelligent
design” will, as Wagner noted, take
it to the mainstream scientific literature,
which is already widely disseminated
and respected, not to a
parvenu like BIO-Complexity.

WHITHER BIO-COMPLEXITY?

It seems safe to predict that it will
be difficult for BIO-Complexity to
attain its ostensible goal of serving
as “the leading forum for testing the
scientific merit of the claim that
intelligent design ... is a credible
explanation for life.” But was that
really the point? Unable to convince
the scientific establishment
of the merits of their views, creationists
have long been engaged in
the project of constructing a counterestablishment,
which mimics —
or perhaps the mot juste is “apes”
— not only peer-reviewed journals
but also professional societies, textbook
publishers, media organizations,
natural history museums, and
graduate programs at accredited
universities.

The purpose of the counterestablishment
is not necessarily to
challenge the scientific establishment
or to affect the public’s view
of science, although those are certainly
accomplishments that
would not be despised if they
were to come to pass. Instead, the
counterestablishment seems primarily
to serve to reassure the
activists, the supporters, and (perhaps
crucially) the funders of the
creationist movement that there is
a worthwhile project under way.
To the extent that BIO-Complexity
flourishes, it will not be because it
is reporting scientific tests of
“intelligent design” but because it
is evincing, in the otherwise
declining “intelligent design”movement,
a few feeble signs of life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Michael D Barton compared the editorial
board of BIO-Complexity with the signatories
of the Discovery Institute’s “Dissent”
statement and kindly shared the result.

References

[Anonymous.] 2003. 8th European creationist
congress [Internet]. Available from
www.genesis.nu/8thecc/.
Last
accessed May 25, 2010.